Why I LOVE R6: Siege

Guest writer and resident Siege fan-girl, Nina, has chucked a feature together, digging down into why she likes Rainbow 6 just so dang  much. ENJOY!

I will go ahead and say it right off the bat; I am not a hardcore multiplayer gamer. I never played CoD, I only ever played the Titanfall 2 and Halo campaigns and I was absolute trash at Destiny crucible.

That said, I do play a hell of a lot of one multiplayer game, and that game is Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Siege. So, with the new season just hitting consoles, I thought it is the perfect time to discuss why I, a self-confessed-not-so-good-at-multiplayer gamer, love Siege.

I never imagined a non-multiplayer gamer like myself to get into a game like Siege, and if you have played R6 then you will know what I mean. Siege’s multiplayer, be it Casual or Ranked, is arguably the hardest and harshest experiences out there.

It isn’t hard and harsh in a Dark Souls way, it’s hard and harsh because its gameplay and mechanics are just so different from other FPS multiplayer games, which is why I love it so goddamn much.

The easiest way to describe how Siege if different is to discuss its genre: Siege is a First Person Tactical Shooter,and that third word, tactical, is where I think Siege separates itself from other FPS multiplayer experiences. Siege is about tactics and creative problem solving, not running around the map at 100 miles an hour blazing away with a big gun (though I think ‘Ash Mains’ would beg to differ).

Now I do have to say, Siege has definitely gotten a whole less strategic and slow as it has gotten more and more mainstream, but that hasn’t taken away the one thing that makes it different; playing Siege smart and creative is more likely to succeed than playing Siege, well, like any other FPS.

Ubisoft has done its best to make Rainbow Six a more grounded and realistic military shooter than its competitors, and that has helped spawn its unique gameplay experience. In the game, the characters you play as (called Operators) do not have the ability to regenerate health, they cannot respawn; FOUR bullets to the body will likely kill you and a single bullet to the head WILL kill you (unless the hit register decides otherwise). Therefore, you have to get creative if you are going to succeed.

The other thing that I love about Siege so much is the importance of team communication. This aspect has dropped off quite a lot as Siege has become more mainstream, but that hasn’t changed the fact that teams who talk and work with each other almost always do ten times better than a team of solo queuers. This is because Siege’s tactical nature and creative freedom are more easily and effectively used when you are working in a group, be it as a 2 stack or a full 5 stack.

 

A lot of FPS multiplayer games have lost that ‘working together’ aspect, which is another reason why they do not appeal to me. In my eyes, if you aren’t going to be working together, what’s the point of playing multiplayer? The way I see it, you play a multiplayer game so you can play with other people in a team (hence the name ‘multiplayer), but if you aren’t even going to talk or work with them, then there is no point. 

But with Rainbow, teamwork and communication is an integral part of its formula, which makes playing with mates that much more fun. Nothing feels better than getting a couple of friends together and devising some brilliant (but at times stupid) strats that you can all enjoy and hopefully succeed with.

Now, all these core thing about the game are what initially drew me to Siege and are what keep me playing it. However, they aren’t the only reasons why I love the game so much. Sure, Rainbow itself is a fantastic game, but that isn’t the only thing it has going for it.

To start with, despite Siege being a mulitplayer only experience, Ubisoft has taken the time to develop lore for all their operators (this can be found on the R6 wiki). As a mainly story driven gamer, I absolutely love all these little lore tid-bits. This lore includes Biographies for all the operators, some of which are several pages long, as welll as psychological profiles (basically what kind of person your operator is) and hints at Rainbow operations and operator relationships (e.g apparently the operators Ying and Fuze hate each other after events during Operation High Sun and operators Zofia and Ela are sisters!). Sometimes, I’ll just play an operator because I like their lore so much.

There is one more thing that I want to touch on. Over the years, as the game has become more and more mainstream, it has gained what we millennial’s call Meme Value and Meme Culture. Some may say that this has ruined the grounded, strategy aspects of the early Siege, but I personally think that this makes the game even more enjoyable.

Earlier in this article, I mentioned a little joke about ‘Ash Mains’ and rushing objective with guns blazing, and this is what I’m talking about when I say meme culture. Ash is a 3-speed 1-armour operator with powerful breaching capabilities and a broken ass gun (seriously, that thing’s damage is just unbelievable).

So, naturally, players love to use her to rush the objective at the speed of sound and murder every defender before they even know what happened. On top of that, Ubi thought it would be a great idea to give her no head hit-box. This just makes Ash even more of a meme, and I think that Ubi haven’t fixed her damn hit-box just because of the meme value.

There are several other quality memes floating around the Siege community (my personal favorite is Lord Tachanka, Ubisoft even recognized this one by adding ‘Lord’ written in Russian on theside of his turret shield), but to be honest, the greatest meme is playing the game ‘incorrectly’.

By this I mean doing the dumbest things in a game built around tactics and strategy. Sure, earlier I mentioned how Siege’s strategic aspects are what drew me to it in the first place, but that said it can be even more fun to do strats that are downright moronic. Enter, the M870 Recruit Rush.

The M870 Recruit Rush is a strat that is easily my favorite thing about the Rainbow Six. In a game all about picking operators who complement each other and formulating plans based on those complements. Rushing objective with a team of default characters with no special gadgets who are all running M870 pump shotties is the greatest feeling ever, whether you are solo queueing or with a bunch of mates. The strat itself is pretty self explanatory: everyone picks GSG9 Recruit running the M870 pump shotty, frag grenades and smoke grenades.

Then, as soon as the action phase begins, everyone rushes the objective; no droning, no fancy entry strategies, just running at the defenders and mowing them down with the M870. More often than not, this strat fails but the beauty of it is that on some very rare occasions, it will work perfectly, and I must say that nothing in more beautiful than an MVP victory screen filled with recruits.

 

So there you have it. All the reasons why I love Rainbow so damn much. Its tactical nature and emphasis on teamwork are what drew me to it in the first place, but it is the games lore tid-bits, strong fandom and great meme culture that keeps me playing.

Thanks for reading! – Nina.